Why You Should Hire a Los Angeles Private Investigator
So why should you hire a California private investigator? If you’ve never worked with a Los Angeles private detective, you may not realize the full scope of private investigations services offered in California. L.A. private investigators spend their days working for all sorts of clients and cases. Sometimes, it’s something as routine as serving court papers (also referred to as process service) to individuals named in legal proceedings. Or, a California private investigator may be hired for a Los Angeles infidelity investigation, child custody or child support case, or to help locate a missing person. Even businesses and other organizations hire Los Angeles private detective agencies for corporate services such as secret shopper investigations, sometimes called integrity checks, or for comprehensive corporate security investigations that can reveal weaknesses and liabilities in campus and data security, employee and management personnel, as well as workplace and operational safety. Disability and workers compensation fraud cases are additional corporate investigations services for which savvy business owners and management teams hire California private investigation firms. While it’s not illegal for private citizens or human resources personnel to address many of these cases, there can be quite a few pitfalls to attempting to do a job that would be better left to a licensed private investigator.
Hiring A California Private Investigator
Serving court papers, searching through someone’s social media profiles or digital devices, or following someone to see what they’re doing, where they’re going, or who they’re meeting. All of these are services offered by licensed private investigators, but they’re also activities many people undertake themselves, whether because they don’t realize they can hire a professional, or because they think they can do a good enough job on their own. What many lay people may not understand or consider, however, are the potential consequences to their reputation, safety, etc. if something goes wrong. Licensed private investigators offer services as varied as background checks, mystery shopper investigations, and locating missing persons. To some extent, a lot of what we do is something that might also be assigned to another type of professional or that an ordinary person might try to accomplish on their own, but when the stakes of a situation rise in the least, it makes sense to hire a professional. Our clients are as diverse as our services, from parents and small business owners to lawyers and large corporations. They come to us instead of trying to do the job themselves, because they understand the risks that can come along with carrying out the services we offer as well as the potential consequences if something is not done thoroughly or correctly. These are some of the reasons you should hire a private detective when you need investigation services.
The profession of being a private investigator grew out of specialization within the legal and law enforcement industries. California private investigators enjoy unique protections under the law, not all of which are available to private citizens or municipal law enforcement officers. Licensed L.A. private detectives also have extensive training and experience in the tools and techniques of private investigation services. We go into a situation with the expertise we need to properly carry it out as well as an understanding of any risks and how to mitigate them. Let’s take process service as an example. Process service, often referred to as serving legal documents, involves presenting court documents or other printed legal information to an individual involved in a lawsuit. California law requires specific criteria to be met in order for a person to be considered served with their court documents. While it’s not against the law in California for a lay person to serve these documents, as long as they are not a party named in the lawsuit, we’ve written before about the many potential pitfalls of depending on anyone other than a licensed process server or private investigator to have legal documents served. If the recipient disputes that the documents were properly served to them, it can delay or completely stall your case. Not to mention, sometimes those being served will become aggressive or even violent, which could be extremely problematic if the person carrying out the process service is unprepared to deal with that sort of situation. This is just one example of why you should hire a private investigator.
Sometimes the risks of attempting to carry out private investigation services yourself manifest more in the areas of reputation or legal liability. In terms of surveilling someone, if a person can prove you’re persistently following them, they can seek legal remedies including charging you with stalking or harassment. They can even apply for protection orders from you, making it a crime for you to approach them or be within a specific proximity to them. And you may face similar consequences for looking through someone’s social media profiles or their digital devices, especially if you manage to confiscate the device or log into their accounts to do so. Being charged with theft or invasion of privacy won’t help you if you’re trying to prove infidelity or gather evidence for a child custody case.
Corporate Private Investigation Services
When it comes to corporate investigations such as pre-employment background screenings or workers comp fraud investigations, the pitfalls of keeping this kind of work in-house have more to do with time and expertise. A human resources employee may have a basic understanding of how to run a background check or confirm a workers compensation claim, but it’s a small part of their much larger job description. They almost certainly won’t be specialists, and it will be one of many competing to-dos on their plate. Outsourcing these tasks is a small price to pay to avoid potential losses from hiring an unscrupulous job candidate or paying higher premiums for workers compensation insurance.
Kinsey Investigations is a licensed Los Angeles private detective agency with more than 20 years’ experience in both individual and corporate private investigations services. Once you know why you should hire a California private investigator, your next question will be, who? Twice voted among the best Los Angeles private investigators, Kinsey Investigations is your answer to this question. Give us a call today to let us help you find the answers to the rest of the questions you have.
